germany gets a third of its oil and gas from russia and some of germany's best-known companies, volkswagen for one, have huge stakes in russia. so any type of sanction has a potential economic blowback and it's just a sign of how the west has a limited toolbox in dealing with the situation in ukraine, chris. >> all right, joe, thank you very much for the reporting. >>> let's bring in cnn military analyst james "spider" marks a retired major generally and former commanding general of the u.s. army intillgence center. general, thank you for joining us. let's leave the politics aside and deal with the urgency on the ground. what do you believe the situation is? who is ukraine fighting? what do you think the stakes are? >> fighting two elements really. you do have pro-russian separatists that are in east ukraine, but they're being supported directly, not only in terms of what i would call over-the-horizon support, weapons support, but also they have russian forces are on the ground instigating this and these are the folks we've seen routinely that have unmarked uniforms and have their face mas